


We Often Go Awry

by SilverSkiesAtMidnight



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Aunt May Dies, But life does go on, Canonical Character Death, Everyone Needs A Hug, Families of Choice, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter doesn't die, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Thanos Wins, plus a few of my own, sorry aunt may ily, wade wilson is not dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-13 09:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15361632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverSkiesAtMidnight/pseuds/SilverSkiesAtMidnight
Summary: Everyone is born marked, and they live knowing that somewhere out there is their other half, a corresponding soul with the same mark.Thanos wins, and suddenly half the people in the universe are gone, just like that.What happens to the half that’s left?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so originally this was going to be a really long one-shot, but then I discovered I don't have the patience and really want to start sharing it ASAP. Guys, I really love and am proud of this fic and I really hope you like it. 
> 
> A couple notes: first of all, this is a soulmate AU, with a focus on Peter/Wade. However, they are not soulmates. Maybe that's spoilery, but I don't want anyone reading this and then getting upset when it's not what they expected. However, please understand: that doesn't mean things aren't going to be okay with them. I'm trying something here, just bear with me. 
> 
> Secondly, I messed with canon a bit here. Infinity War in this universe still happened more or less as shown in the movie, but I moved it forward by a few years, for plot reasons and also because I have no interest in writing peter/wade with 15 year old peter. So basically, it's more or less canon, but just with a gap of fiveish years between the end of Civil War and the beginning of Infinity War, enough time for the Avengers to reconcile and Peter to grow up a little. 
> 
> This is not beta read, all mistakes are my own.

For all the chaos in Peter’s life, there was never really a point where it didn’t feel like it made sense. There was an order to it, a pattern. Sometimes a pattern too intricate and grand for him to understand, but he trusted always that there was a pattern nonetheless. 

In a snap, the pattern disappears. 

\- - - 

The whole ride back from Titan, his fingers compulsively trace the black fibonacci spiral that has stood in stark contrast to the pale skin of his wrist since the day he was born. It’s hard to tell in the dim light of the ship, but he thinks it looks a little lighter, a little less sharp than it did that morning. He tells himself it’s too early to tell. 

He concentrates on it, and does his best to be a middle ground between Tony’s endless pacing of their section of the tiny ship and the blue alien lady’s complete and eerie stillness in the pilot’s seat, staying seated and motionless but for the restless bouncing of one leg and the constant motion of his fingers. 

He doesn’t look up until he hears Tony’s small intake of breath. He raises his eyes to see Earth ahead of them, blue and shining in the dark. 

_It looks so small,_ he thinks. 

\- - - 

They land way outside the city, deciding there’s no good way to land a spaceship in the middle of Manhattan without causing even more panic. 

Tony’s on the phone as soon as they’re through the atmosphere and have a signal. He waits, almost vibrating with tension, as the phone rings. 

“Pepper,” he breathes at last, shoulders slumping with relief. “You’re okay.” 

Peter is relieved too, though his is slight. He’s glad she’s okay of course, but she’s not one of his biggest concerns. He worries at the skin around his thumbnail, and tries not to think about Aunt May, or Ned, or MJ, or the other Avengers. He doesn’t look at his wrist. 

Within minutes, he’s tracing the spiral again anyway, without needing to look. 

\- - -

It’s been three days since the snap, three days since Titan, three days since theirs and every other little corner of the universe was ripped in two forever. Peter hasn’t left the tower since he got back. 

Technically, most of the missing can’t legally be declared _dead,_ not without a body. 

So most are just missing, in the eyes of the government and any loved ones who didn’t personally witness them crumble to ash. 

Aunt May remains one of the many missing persons on the crowded list. 

Mr. Stark didn’t hesitate to give Peter a room in the tower, which he gratefully hides away in. The others, the ones still alive, give him space, busy grieving their own losses.

Everyone on Earth has something to grieve. 

Peter wears long sleeves for three days, and keeps the lights off when he showers. 

Everyone knows how long it takes for a mark to fade, and he refuses to torture himself in the meantime by obsessively checking it. 

On the Third Night, he pulls up his sleeve and looks. 

\- - - 

It’s Bruce he wakes, pounding on his door at just past two in the morning. 

Bruce opens the door, blinking bleary-eyed at him, hair rumpled. Faintly, Peter hears Thor in the background, groggily asking what’s happening. 

Bruce frowns at him in concern. “Peter, what-?”

Peter doesn’t say anything. He simply holds out his arm, showing the pink spiral that twists like a scar against his wrist. 

Bruce’s face twists in understanding and sorrow. He wraps his arms around Peter. “I’m so sorry, Peter,” he murmurs. 

Peter just squeezes him tighter. He doesn’t cry. It’s hard to cry for someone you’ve never met. 

It’s six a.m. before Ned texts.

_my mark didn’t fade!!!! they made it!!!! hbu?_

Peter ends up falling asleep, without finding it in him to answer. 

\- - -

By a week post-snap, some of the missing have officially been declared dead, though the millions without a known (and not-missing) soulmate to prove it remain. 

Aunt May remains missing, Uncle Ben having already taken her corresponding soulmark with him.

Peter hopes, wherever she is, she’s found him again. 

\- - -

On the eighth day, he leaves his room, not because he particularly wants to see anyone else, but because he thinks if he spends anymore time in there he might actually go insane. 

He ends up going down to the gym, which he finds to already be occupied. Steve is red-faced and sweating, and judging by the pile of broken punching bags, has been at this for a while. Bucky’s once-red star peeks out from under his t-shirt sleeve like a wound. 

He stops the current bag from swinging, turning to look at Peter before he can sneak back out. He shoots him a brittle smile, which drops away immediately. “Hey Peter. I heard about your mark. I’m really sorry.”  
Peter gives an awkward little half-shrug. “Yeah, me too,” he says, not sure if he’s agreeing or expressing the same sympathy back. 

Steve walks over to the small table along the edge of the room, picking up the water bottle that sits there. Peter sees the blood that covers his knuckles, though the wounds are probably already healed. 

“You’ll have the gym to yourself, I was just about to go for a run,” he says, then flinches slightly, like he already regrets the words.

Sam flashes through Peter’s mind. “I could go with you,” he blurts out, and immediately regrets it. No, he doesn’t want to see his new half-city, not really. Not yet. 

Luckily, Steve either picks up on this or genuinely doesn’t want the company, because he smiles at Peter, a little more warmly and gently than his earlier one. “That’s very kind of you Peter, but no, thank you. Stay here, take advantage of the solitude.” He nods a goodbye, and brushes past him out the door. 

Peter relaxes, feeling bad that’s he’s actually grateful Steve is gone. It’s Steve. _Steve_ , his teammate, a man who he’s trained with and fought with and hung out with on movie nights. 

But then. It’s not Steve, not really, is it? It’s the remaining half of Steve, and he’s just the remaining half of Peter. 

He’s not even sure what complete Peter was like. Would have been like. Was _supposed_ to be like. 

How do you get back to normal when everything is this fucked?

\- - -

On the tenth day, he goes up to the lab. Tony’s up there, but he knows it, he’s prepared this time.

He’s not prepared to find Tony _and_ Pepper, together. He can sense he’s walked into a fight the moment he steps through the elevator doors, and he’s honestly not sure if that’s better or worse than finding them happy together. 

Tony is behind one of the worktables, pointedly not looking up from whatever it is he’s working on. Dark bags hang under his eyes, his face is unshaven. He looks completely exhausted, which, knowing Tony, might actually mean he hasn’t slept since they got home. 

Pepper, on the other hand, looks furious, her arms crossed and jaw set in a hard line. She looks back when Peter enters, and immediately relaxes her stance, smiling gently at him. “Hi, Peter, how are you?”

Without the anger masking it, he realizes she looks just as exhausted as her soulmate. 

He gives the same half-shrug he’s given everyone who asks him that question. He’s becoming very good at it. “I’m okay.”

She tilts her head, concern shining in her eyes. “I haven’t seen you much this past week.”

“Been busy,” he dodges. “How about you - you guys? Is everything okay?” he asks awkwardly.

The anger comes back, though not directed at him. She opens her mouth, but Tony speaks before she can. 

“Oh, yeah, sure, everything’s just groovy. Yeah, almost four billion people are dead, but everything’s working perfectly, why wouldn’t it be?”

Peter flinches slightly, which Pepper doesn’t miss. “ _Tony_ ,” she says sharply. 

Tony looks up, blinking at Peter like he just noticed he was there. He sighs raggedly, scrubbing at his already-bloodshot eyes. “Fuck, I’m sorry, kid. Just ignore me, it’s been a really long day.”

“That’s because it’s been several days, Tony,” Pepper says wearily, reaching up to rub at her own eyes, though much more carefully. “Tony, you can’t fill in for half the planet by yourself, you just can’t, and you’re going to kill yourself trying. You need to take a break,” she pleads. 

He flings the screwdriver he was working with to the ground with a clatter that makes Pepper and Peter both flinch back. He braces his hands against the workbench, and looks at the two of them with slightly wild eyes. “You want me to take a break? Okay, sure. Do you want to explain to the doctors and nurses at the five hospitals within a hundred mile radius that don’t have power that, oh, I’m sorry, I’ll get back to fixing that part of the power grid after I have a little nap, that okay? How about the fourteen, _fourteen_ , Pepper, commercial airlines that went down after their pilots dissolved mid-flight that _still_ haven’t seen rescue workers because all the surviving workers are putting out the million other fires that sprang up when half of humanity disappeared at once? And that’s not even _touching_ on all the - the _little_ stuff, if you can call things like millions of car accidents and the kids in foster care that lost their parents, and the fucking nuclear power plants that had to shut down so we wouldn’t have another Chernobyl on top of everything else, and -”

“ _Tony,_ ” she cuts him off, and her voice is so filled with soft grief that for once he does stop. “I _know_.” 

He chews at his lip, looking down at the pile of circuitry in front of him. “I’ll take a break when I’m done with this,” he says quietly, all the earlier frustration draining out of him, leaving his shoulders slumped. 

“Thank you,” she says, her own anger faded as well. She walks over to Peter, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go get something to eat. I don’t think this is the best place for either of us right now,” she says quietly, and he doesn’t resist when she leads him back into the elevator. He looks back over his shoulder, to see his mentor still standing, hands flat against the table and head hanging so Peter can’t see his face.

“So,” Pepper says once the doors close, clearly doing her best to sound cheerful and composed. “I think the tower might be a little low on food at the moment, but I’m sure we can scrounge up something from the communal kitchen. How do scrambled eggs sound? I’m sure we’ve got some eggs -”

“I’m sorry,” Peter blurts out. He didn’t mean to say it, but the words have been at the back of his throat for eight days, and it’s a relief to finally have them free. 

Her forehead crinkles in confusion. “What are you sorry for, honey? Tony? No no, sweetie, trust me, that has nothing to do with you. That’s just Tony being, well, Tony.”

“No,” he mumbles, not meeting her eyes. “No, I mean - I’m sorry for all of this. I’m -” he takes a deep breath, and forces himself to look at her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him when I had a chance.” 

Pepper looks horrified. “Oh, _honey_ ,” she breathes shakily. She bites her lip, her eyes glistening, and then she wraps her arms around him, crushing him to her chest. 

“Don’t you ever, _ever_ , blame yourself,” she whispers fiercely. “Multiple _teams_ of superheroes tried to stop him, and they couldn’t. There is nothing you could have done that would have kept this from happening. Sometimes...sometimes the universe is just a bad place to be, and we just have to find a way to live with that.”

Against his will, his arms come up to wrap around her as well. He buries his face against her shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears that threaten to spill out. 

“I really miss Aunt May,” he says against her shirt, his voice breaking.

She strokes his hair, the gesture so familiar and affectionate that the tears do start to fall. “I know. I know.”

\- - - 

He ends up making them both scrambled eggs, while she makes them hot cocoa. 

“I should probably make you eat something with vegetables, but I’m not sure we’ve got anything fresh enough,” she jokes, though her eyes are still red-rimmed. 

“I’m twenty years old, I don’t need anyone to ‘make’ me eat my vegetables,” he says, pretending to sound offended. 

“Oh please, I was a college student once, I know _exactly_ how unhealthy your diet is,” she teases. 

He laughs weakly. He wonders how many of his classmates and professors he’s never going to see again. Is the school even going to open again someday? Is there even a point in going back when it does?

He pokes at his eggs with his fork. He glances up at Pepper, and realizes she’s staring out the window at the much darker city with glassy eyes. 

“You okay?” he asks tentatively, a stupid question that seems to be all there is to say lately. 

She jolts slightly, looking back at him and trying and failing to smile. “I was just thinking about how I should restock the kitchen tomorrow, and I thought, ‘oh, I’ll just send Happy’, and then I remembered -” she breaks off, looking down at her own food. “Anyway.” She takes a bite of the eggs. “These are delicious, Peter, thank you so much for making them.” 

“Yeah, of course, anytime,” he says, quickly shoveling eggs into his own mouth. He chews slowly, his mind still elsewhere. He clears his throat, taking a sip of hot cocoa. “Hey Pepper?”

“Yes, Peter?” 

He traces the handle of the mug with his fingers. “Do you love Tony?” he winces immediately. “Sorry, that’s a stupid question, that’s not what I - just, are you glad he’s in your life?”

“He is definitely one of the best things in my life,” she answers carefully. She reaches out, and gently takes the hand not fidgeting with his mug. “But Peter, he’s not the only good thing in it.”

“Yeah, but, I mean - if you’d never met him, your life would be worse, wouldn’t it?” he mumbles, accepting her hand without looking at her. 

She purses her lips, choosing her words with care. “If I’d never met him, my life would be very different. But I don’t know that it would necessarily be worse. It would be a completely different life, and I would be a different person. There’s no way to really compare two lives and say for sure which one is better. They’re just...different.”

He studies their interlocked fingers, his long and nimble, hers slender and smooth, her clear nail polish chipping off. “Did you feel like you were complete when you met him?”

“I was complete before I met him,” she answers instantly. “People try to frame it as though you’re not a full person until you have your soulmate, but...I never believed that.” Her other hand reaches up, ghosting along her shoulder. He knows their blue heart-shaped mark lies somewhere along her shoulder blade, hidden by her blouse. “Our soulmates aren’t the other half of our souls, we don’t _need_ them to exist. They just compliment us. They bring out the best in us. That’s what our symbols represent: not what we are, but what we _could_ be together.” She squeezes his hand, gently, until he looks up and meets her gaze. “Peter, there’s an infinite number of things you can be. You don’t need anyone else for that.” 

He snorts softly. “That’s not what the universe says.” 

“Well, the universe can go fuck itself,” she says viciously, and his head whips up, his eyes wide. She smirks slightly at his expression. “The universe isn’t what it used to be, it’s got no place telling us what to do.”

He blinks rapidly, swallowing. “You’ve gotta put a dollar in the swear jar,” he finally whispers. 

She laughs, tired but genuine. “As long as you promise not to tell Steve, I think we’ll get away with it.”

He laughs softly with her. 

\- - -

They don’t stay up much longer. He’s been sleeping more than he should, but she hasn’t, and it shows. They ride up together. His floor is first, but before the door opens, she hugs him again, unexpectedly. “Take as much time as you need, Peter, but be careful. Don’t lock yourself away forever. We all need each other more than ever, okay?” she tells him quietly. 

His throat feels tight. “I won’t. I promise,” he manages at last. 

“Good.” She kisses the top of his head, and waves goodbye as he steps off. 

He curls up in bed, not realizing how exhausted he is until his head hits the pillow. He’s asleep in minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so while I desperately hope you liked it, I also would love to hear all your thoughts, positive or negative. Please god comment and/or leave kudos, they feed my soul and my motivation. 
> 
> You can also come say hi on [tumblr](https://sunflowersandink.tumblr.com/), which would probably make my whole week. 
> 
> Let me know what you think, second chapter should hopefully be up by early next week!! Thanks for reading! :D


	2. Chapter 2

On the fourteenth day, exactly two weeks after what’s come to simply be called The Event, Peter tries to estimate exactly how long he can avoid Ned without being a bad friend. 

As if on cue, his phone buzzes on the nightstand, and he suppresses a groan. 

_hey peter!! hope ur ok!! dad got me that Lego Enterprise we were looking at! i think mom and him are just really happy we all made it, they’d probs get me a pony if i really wanted it tbh. anywys i havent opened it yet in case u wanted to come over and help me build it!! :D_

So far, Ned has texted him every single day since the Event, and so far Peter hasn’t said a word back since the third night. 

Yeah, okay, so whatever the acceptable length of time spent avoiding his best friend is, he’s definitely way past it. 

He raises the phone to text back, and immediately falters. 

What the _fuck_ is he supposed to say?

He spends the next ten minutes staring at the blank text bar on his screen. 

_Maybe I’ll just text him back tomorrow,_ he thinks, and nearly puts his phone back down on the desk, ready to roll back over and go back to sleep, even though it’s almost ten in the morning. 

Then, he thinks about what Pepper said to him on the elevator. 

“Hey Friday?” 

“Yes, Peter?”

“If I leave the tower, can you just...not tell Mr. Stark?”

“If he inquires about your location, Peter, I will have to tell him. But no, I am not required to alert him if you leave.”

“Okay, good. I just don’t want him to worry about me or anything, you know.”

“Yes, Peter.” 

Reluctantly, he gathers his suit and mask from where he’d shoved them under the bed the night they got back and _(Tony sent a suit to his apartment found the ashes in the kitchen)_ found out what had happened to the world. It’s still got his blood smeared on it from the fight on Titan, he knows, blended in and hidden in the red fabric. 

He dresses normally except for the mask, leaving the rest of the suit behind, and makes his way out the window. 

From the rooftops, in the day, things don’t look so different. Traffic is thinner, but he can pretend. He can pretend he doesn’t see the damaged buildings where the helicopters crashed, or the spots where buildings stood before they burned to the ground. 

He can pretend. 

He can pretend, and so he does. He pretends all the way the way to the roof of Ned’s apartment building, at which point the illusion falls apart when he realizes if he goes down there, he’s going to have to _talk_ to Ned, and Ned doesn’t know that they’re pretending, does he? He’s going to want to _talk_ about things, and he’ll look at Peter all sympathetically because that’s what people _do_ when they know that whatever fate you were supposed to have is gone and destroyed. 

He goes in a different direction. 

Ten minutes later, he’s tapping on a different window. 

Inside, MJ looks up from the sketchbook on her lap, staring at him through the glass. He gives her a tiny wave. 

She gets up and opens the window, her expression unreadable. 

“Hey,” he says. 

She turns and walks back to her bed, flinging herself down onto it without looking at him. “You could have texted.”

He slips through the open window, landing lightly on the carpet. He hovers in place, not sure if she wants him to shut the window behind him. “Yeah, sorry about that. Coming here was kind of snap decision, I wasn’t even sure you’d _be_ here, or if you’d stayed at Harvard, or what…”

“I don’t mean _now_ ,” she snaps in a brittle voice, and he knows her well enough to hear the hurt in it and _oh_ -

_God,_ he’s a selfish asshole. 

“MJ, I’m so sorry,” he blurts out. “I should have called.” 

“Yeah, you should have,” she says, sketching so forcefully he can hear the paper tearing beneath the lead. 

He shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket, twisting his fingers together where they’re hidden. “I checked the databases to make sure you were okay. I didn’t just forget about you or anything. I just -” he presses down on his fingers until the bones threaten to snap. The pain grounds him, a little. “It wasn’t just you. If that helps. I haven’t really talked to Ned either. Or...anyone.”

She doesn’t look up, but her hand stops gouging marks into her sketchbook. “I know. He texted me. That’s how I found out you were alive.” Another ten seconds pass before she huffs a sigh, and pats the bed in front of her. He folds himself onto it gratefully, wrapping his arms around his knees. 

His voice comes out muffled against the back of his legs. “Just ‘cause you’re alive doesn’t mean you're okay. I should’ve called or texted or _something._ ”

“It’s...fine,” she mutters. “I mean, no, it’s not fine, you were being a shitty friend, but I’ll give you a shitty friend pass. You only get one.”

He smiles tentatively at her over his knees, and receives an eyeroll in return. It’s a step. 

“Ned said...your aunt?” she asks bluntly, though he can tell she’s trying to be more delicate than usual. 

“Yeah.” He swallows heavily. 

She bites her lip hard. “My mom.” 

Peter lets out a shaky breath, and doesn’t say he’s sorry. They both know. “That sucks.”

She just nods in response.

Carefully, he crawls up to join her at the head of the bed. Giving her plenty of time to kick him off if she doesn’t want him to, he puts his head on her shoulder. A few seconds later, she rests her head against his in return. He closes his eyes, and doesn’t let himself think about anything except the warmth of her pressed against his side. The sound of her heartbeat is more comforting than he could have imagined. 

They sit like that for a long time. 

He moves first, shifting his arm so the sleeve rides up and the scar-like spiral becomes visible. He knows she sees it, the way she sees everything, but she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t react at all, except to take his hand, squeezing it tight enough to hurt, and it’s deeply reassuring. 

Her own pale butterfly on the back of her hand is easy to see. He doesn’t know what color it used to be. It went pale when she was only two.

He doesn’t think he’s ever loved her more than he does in that moment. 

“Do you wanna see what I drew?” she says at last, and he doesn’t comment on the fact that her voice sounds hoarse. 

“Absolutely,” he croaks, and she doesn’t mention it either. 

She flips back several pages in her sketchbook. “Look. Wolf-fish.” 

He studies the strange, furry, slightly nightmarish creature with interest. “Huh. So does that make it a mermaid or a werewolf? Werefish?”

“Merwolf. It’s not a mermaid because there’s no maid part, and it can’t be a were-anything because it doesn’t change into anything else,” she murmurs matter-of-factly.

“Doesn’t the fur slow it down a lot? It doesn’t look very hydrodynamic.”

“Yeah. It’s almost extinct. It’s basically the koala of the sea in terms of stupid evolutionary design.”

He laughs for the first time in weeks. 

They end up coming up with designs for merdogs, mercats, merbirds (which don’t make any sense but look cool), and merhorses (they have one and a half terrible sketches of those before they remember seahorses exist), with her sketching and him giving input that she only ignores about forty percent of the time, which means she’s being nice. 

She kicks him out at nearly sunset. “My dad will be home soon. He doesn’t spend much time at home...lately, but he’s been big on us eating dinner together, so…” she shrugs. 

She says it so casually he knows it’s anything but. “Hey,” he bumps her gently with his shoulder. “If you wanna text or call me, I promise I’ll answer now.”

“Yeah, you better. You used up your one shitty friend card,” she mutters. A moment later she bumps him back. “That goes for you too, asshole. Also you better come visit again soon. I’m pretty sure school’s gonna be closed for awhile and I don’t have anything better to do.” 

“Yeah, I promise,” he says sincerely. “You can come to the tower too, if you want to just… get out of here for a bit. There’s a big TV.” He thinks about Aunt May’s apartment that he hasn’t been back to yet, can’t even _picture_ the empty space that now exists there. He understands completely the haunted look that passes across MJ’s face. 

“Yeah, that might be cool,” she says. She hesitates for a moment, and then flings her arms around him, squeezing him so tight he can barely breathe. He returns the favor, careful not to break her ribs with his strength. She pulls back at last, scrubbing furiously at her eyes. “See you soon, bug-nerd.” 

“Draw me something cool,” he says, grinning as he pulls his mask on so she can’t see his own glistening eyes. 

“Yeah, I always do,” she snorts. She waves goodbye to him through the open window as he climbs down the fire escape. She waits until he reaches the bottom before she shoots him a big grin, flips him off, and slams the window shut. 

He swings away feeling significantly lighter than he did when he woke up that morning. He doesn’t go back to the tower, though. Not yet. 

First, he has one more stop to make. 

He knocks on the door this time, stowing the mask away in his pocket. The door opens a crack, a chain keeping it from opening all the way. The eye that peeks out widens, and the door immediately slams shut again. The chain rattles, and Ned flings the door open again in seconds. “Peter!” 

He offers his best friend a weak smile. “Hey, Ned -” is all he gets out before he’s being nearly crushed by another person for the second time that night. 

“Wow, so many hugs lately, it’s _gotta_ be the end of the world,” he says into Ned’s shoulder, and then instantly hates himself. 

Ned quickly pulls back to examine him, scanning Peter like he’s expecting him to be injured. Peter rolls his eyes. “I’m fine, Ned, I’ve just been a jackass.” He looks him in the eye. “I’m really sorry for ignoring you for like two weeks,” he says awkwardly. “Do you still want to build that Enterprise?” 

Ned grins at him. There’s still concern there, of course there is, but there’s so much relief Peter feels even more guilty for avoiding him. “Dude, of course! C’mon,” he waves an arm, inviting him in, and shuts the door behind him. “Dad’s at work, they have all the engineers working overtime, with the electrical grid and all that, and my aunt kind of, well, you know, so my mom’s been staying at her place to help my uncle with the kids,” he explains, and then frowns, face twisting in distress. “I heard about Aunt May,” he says quietly. “I’m really sorry.” 

Peter flinches slightly, unable to hide a wince. “Yeah.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Ned asks uncertainly, and Peter sees his eyes flick to his covered wrist. 

“Not really,” he says firmly. “I just want to play with some Legos, if that’s cool.”

Ned nods quickly, eyes lighting up. “It’s up in my room.”

They hurry up the stairs, and ten minutes later they’re sitting on the floor, surrounded by tiny pieces, and it’s so goddamn familiar and comfortable Peter might just cry. 

They work in companionable silence, only speaking occasionally to see if something is coming together right or to ask the other to pass a piece. 

Out of the blue, Ned stops, and looks at him. “You know I’ve got your back, right? Like, always?” he asks solemnly. 

Peter blinks at him in shock, then swallows, and nods. “You know I’ve got yours too, right?”

“And that you can always talk to me if you want to?”

“Yeah man, I know. You’re my guy in the chair, right?” Peter grins shakily, kicking him lightly in the shin.

“Yeah. Always,” Ned beams back at him. “Hey, pass me that piece - yeah, the one by your hand.” 

Peter hands it to him, and there’s a warmth in his chest that, for the moment at least, feels a little bit like everything is going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked the new chapter!! Lemme know what you thought, and feel free to come talk to me or give me prompts on [tumblr](https://sunflowersandink.tumblr.com/)!


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